template for submissions - amazon web...

Template for submissions

21.01.2019 – 22.04.2019 http://www.fao.org/fsnforum/activities/discussions/CFS-smallholders-fsn

Call for experiences in the use and application of three sets of CFS policy recommendations on smallholder agriculture in the context of food security and nutrition

Template for submissions

Please use this submission form to share your experience in the use and application of three interconnected sets of CFS policy recommendations on smallholder agriculture in the context of food security and nutrition.

For the necessary background and guidance, please refer to the topic note: http://www.fao.org/fsnforum/activities/discussions/CFS-smallholders-fsn.

You can upload the completed form to the FSN Forum (www.fao.org/fsnforum) or send it via email to [email protected].

Title of your submission* World Food Programme’s experiences in connecting smallholders to markets

Geographical coverageIndicate if your submission covers several levels, e.g. national level and regional level

(e.g. national, regional if several countries of the same region or/ and global if several countries in more than one region)

Global with country-specific examples

Country(ies)/ Region(s) covered by your submission

(e.g. Kenya, Tanzania and Malawi)

Burkina Faso, Niger and Ethiopia

Contact person Name:

Gianluca Ferrera, Purchase for Progress (P4P) Senior Programme Advisor, World Food Programme HQ

Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition www.fao.org/fsnforum

http://www.fao.org/fsnforum

http://www.fao.org/fsnforum/activities/discussions/CFS-smallholders-fsn

mailto:[email protected]


http://www.fao.org/fsnforum/activities/discussions/CFS-smallholders-fsn

http://bit.ly/2nAitb1

2Call for experiences in the use and application of three sets of CFS policy recommendations on smallholder agriculture in the context of food security and nutrition

Email address:

[email protected]

Affiliation (indicate your affiliation)

Government

UN organization

Civil Society / NGO

Private Sector

Academia

Donor

Other …………………………………………………………

*Please choose a title for your submission, referring e.g. to your organization or/ and geographical coverage

If the information provided in your submission results from a multistakeholder consultation, please also fill the table in annex.

(i) Awareness of CFS policy recommendations

- How have you heard of these policy recommendations (e.g. CFS meeting or event, internet, colleagues, government, civil society organization)?

o Through colleagues, participation in the CFS meetings and the internet

- Have you taken any actions to make these policy recommendations known to colleagues or other CFS stakeholders (Please tick the answer below)?☐ No☒ Yes

If yes, please explain:

o Sharing through bilateral emails and resource newsletters.

- What would you recommend to CFS member states, Rome-based Agencies or/ and other stakeholders to make CFS policy products more widely known? Please explain:

o Organize a consultation/gathering/workshop for relevant stakeholders to come together, learn more and discuss the policy recommendations.

o Organize webinars or virtual sessions to share these with implementers in the field and provide technical insights into applying them.

o Create a network of policy implementers, experts and



mailto:[email protected]


parties interested in implementing the recommendations.

(ii) Use of the three sets of policy recommendations

- Which set(s) of policy recommendations have been used at sub-national, national, regional or/ and global level to support smallholder agriculture (please tick the answer below)?

Investing in Smallholder Agriculture for Food Security and Nutrition

Connecting Smallholders to Markets

[If these policy recommendations have not been used, please go directly to question (xi)]

- For each set that has been used, please indicate for which main purpose(s) it has been used

(e.g training; awareness raising; capacity development; development/ assessment of projects, national strategies, plans of action, legislative or policy framework; investments by national governments or international financial institutions in favour of smallholders; development of finance proposals that are more favourable to small-scale producers; formulation and implementation of specific national strategies in favour of smallholder agriculture; other)

☒ Set 1: Investing in Smallholder Agriculture for Food Security and Nutrition

Main purpose(s): Awareness raising, project development, drafting of project proposals and strategy documents, conceptualizing pro-smallholder initiatives and policy advocacy.

Specifically in Niger, where WFP supports smallholders through institutional markets such as schools, these recommendations have been useful for developing the strategy for national local procurement from smallholders (SNALAPP – Strategie nationale d’achats locaux aupres des petits producteurs), and for developing its implementation tools and funding mechanisms.

☒ Set 2: Connecting Smallholders to MarketsMain purpose(s): Awareness raising, project development,

drafting of project proposals and strategy documents, conceptualizing pro-smallholder initiatives and policy advocacy

☒ Set 3: Sustainable Agricultural Development for Food Security and Nutrition: What Roles for Livestock?

Main purpose(s): The recommendations in this were applied to



http://www.fao.org/3/a-bq854e.pdf



http://www.fao.org/3/a-av034e.pdf

http://www.fao.org/3/a-av034e.pdf


some extent in the “Milk Project”, a milk value chain and home-grown school feeding project, undertaken by WFP in Burkina Faso. In Niger, these recommendations were also applied to the school feeding activity through the development of livestock at the school level, for improving students’ nutrition by including protein-rich food.

- Which policy recommendations were found particularly useful to support smallholders and their food and nutrition security? Please explain:

Recommendations 2, 4, 5, 9, 16, 17 and 18 of “Investing in Agriculture for Food Security and Nutrition”.

Recommendations 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 15, 17, 19, 22 and 24 of “Connecting Smallholders to Markets”.

(iii) Present and expected benefits for smallholders

Indicate the results obtained/ expected in the short term and in the medium-to-long term, with quantitative indications where feasible (i.e. estimate of the number of smallholders that have been or are expected to be affected)

How have smallholders benefitted (or are expected to benefit) from the use of these policy recommendations for food security and nutrition in the short and medium to long-term? How have they contributed to the progressive realization of the right to food? (please answer in the two boxes below)

Results in the short term (qualitative and quantitative):

(In addition to providing a qualitative assessment, please indicate where feasible the number of smallholders that have been directly involved in activities, e.g. six training involving a total of 250 people)

Smallholder farmers feature prominently in WFP’s food assistance initiatives, either as beneficiaries of food assistance or food suppliers. WFP recognizes that supporting smallholders to increase their productivity and incomes, and building stronger food systems through inclusive agricultural and economic development are key to achieving SDG 2 – Zero Hunger. Therefore, WFP has developed models that combine wide partnerships, innovative solutions and context-specific support for smallholders and their national governments, with systemic impacts in agricultural value chains and broader food systems. These efforts are more than just traditional hand-outs of “food-aid”, but rather an enormous range of projects and platforms that aim to empower those most vulnerable to access nutritious food. They include the market-access oriented approaches under the Smallholder Agricultural Market Support umbrella, such as Purchase for Progress (P4P), Farm to Market Alliance and the Virtual Farmers Market (VFM), as well as the livelihood-oriented Food Assistance for Assets (FFA), post-harvest loss reduction



https://www1.wfp.org/smallholder-market-support


efforts under the Zero Food Loss initiative and home-grown school meals programmes.

In the short-term, below are some results at the global level:

In line with the Agenda for Sustainable Development, WFP has mainstreamed smallholder support into its Corporate Strategic Plan for 2017 – 2021, through the inclusion of Strategic Result 3 aimed at improving smallholder livelihoods, productivity and food security, and Strategic Result 4 aimed at strengthening food systems.

Building on experiences in supporting smallholders so far, and drawing on the recommendations of documents such as the CFS policy recommendations, in 2017 WFP created the Pro-Smallholder Food Assistance Strategy to boost smallholder resilience and market access globally.

Additionally, the CFS recommendations are also reflected in a number of existing WFP policies, such as the School Feeding (2013), Building Resilience for Food Security and Nutrition (2015), South-South Cooperation (2015), Gender (2017), Environment (2017), Climate Change (2017) and Nutrition (2017) policies.

Additionally, below are some country-level impacts:

1. Burkina Faso

WFP has adopted and implemented some of the recommendations in the three sets in the FFA, P4P and Milk Project (smallholder support and home-grown school feeding) initiatives. The results so far include:

Creation/rehabilitation of 38,701 hectares (ha) of soil and water conservation and restoration and protected rehabilitated lands.

Creation/rehabilitation of 7,168 cubic meters of treated gullies.

1,185 ha of lowland appointed.

Establishment of 10 “boulis” of 30,000 m3.

3,431 people, of whom 64% are women, were trained on gender, quality management and post-harvest loss reduction, financial literacy and composting.

425 crop coverings, 13,330 sealed food packaging bags, 360 metal silos and 60 manual peanut shellers were transferred.

WFP purchased 173 mt of beans worth US$138,000




from smallholders.

Smallholders supported by WFP sold 13,000 mt of food worth US$4,467,000 to other buyers.

WFP constructed 2 warehouses.

Two new milk processing units were established to complement the four existing ones. WFP purchases 90 mt of milk worth US$244,000 from these units for distribution in school canteens.

WFP also upgrade the production quality of the two milk processing units in Djibo.

2. Ethiopia

In Ethiopia, the policy recommendations supported the P4P project which enabled more than 126,000 smallholder farmers to access remunerative markets. The approach focused on capacity strengthening and leveraging innovative partnerships, which led to farmers and their organizations improving their awareness on food quality, increasing their access to credit to support aggregation and supplying more food to buyers beyond WFP.

3. Niger

In Niger, these policy recommendations have enabled WFP and national partners in the development of the strategy to procure from smallholders, establish pricing and contractual mechanisms for smallholder purchases, build farmer organization capacity and empower women through the Rural Women Economic Empowerment (RWEE) project. So far, this has resulted in strengthening the post-harvest handling, accounting and marketing capacities of 255 smallholders through four trainings, and 14,169 mt of cereals and pulses worth US$6,391,899 purchased locally. Beneficiary testimonies from the impact surveys for the local purchases also reveal an improvement in the living conditions.

Results in the medium to long term (qualitative and quantitative):

(In addition to providing a qualitative assessment, please indicate where feasible the number of smallholders that have been or are expected to be indirectly affected by activities, e.g. training leading to development of local plan of action expected to affect 1,000 smallholders)




In the mid- to long-term, WFP expects the supported smallholder farmers to become competitive players in their food systems. As they work together to sell food to WFP, private companies and institutional buyers, over time smallholders should become suppliers rather than recipients of food assistance. Additionally, smallholders engage in crop diversification and increase their production of nutritious crops to not only improve their household nutrition, but also enhance their income-base.

For instance, in Burkina Faso WFP seeks to achieve the below results between 2019-2023 through the smallholder support activities:

Support 20 organizations of 50,000 smallholder farmers.

Enable smallholders to sell 75,000 mt of produce.

Establish five milk processing units.

Support 2500 participants each year through the financial inclusion programmes.

Organize 5 business connection workshops for smallholders.

Build 10 warehouses.

(vi) Present and expected benefits for female smallholders

1. Have any specific actions been taken (in line with these policy recommendations) to promote the realization of women’s empowerment, women’s rights and gender equality in the context of smallholder agriculture? Please explain:

Women play a crucial role in agriculture in developing countries, especially in food production. However, their labour is often invisible, unpaid and undervalued, and they generally have less access to productive resources than men which undermines their ability to profit from farming and affects their food security and nutrition. As involving women more fully in agriculture can drive economic development, increase food security and nutrition and improve household welfare, WFP prioritizes women’s empowerment through the smallholder programmes.

Women are supported to participate in sales to formal markets and to take on leadership roles in farmers’ organizations. Women’s ability to influence decision-making around business and spending is also prioritized. This is a gender-transformative approach, focusing on specific interventions which not only encourage the participation of women farmers, but aim to address the root causes of inequality that limit their potential.

Building on the Purchase for Progress (P4P) pilot, WFP’s smallholder agricultural market support initiatives give opportunities to women involved in farming to increase their economic benefit from the roles they play in food production, marketing, or processing. Women’s leadership skills and




confidence level is increasing through capacity building around financial literacy, farmer organization management and marketing. For example, WFP supported farmers’ organizations and Agricultural Business Centres in Sierra Leone reach 11,000 participating farmers and 55% are women, many of whom occupy leadership positions.

WFP empowers women farmers by designing programmes focused on income generating activities and increasing their participation and engagement in the local food system. Because WFP offers a market and, thus, economic opportunity to smallholder farmers, it is a good entry point for women’s economic empowerment activities such as in the case of the UN Women and RBAs’ Joint Program on Rural Women’s Economic Empowerment (RWEE).

Below is a summary of specific actions undertaken to empower women in agriculture:

2. Burkina Faso

In Burkina Faso, gender, protection and youth are mainstreamed in the FFA activities which ensure that beneficiary targeting mechanisms and project activities are designed to leave no one behind, including elderly, people with disabilities and pregnant women. Additionally, 60 percent of the community assets under FFA are built by the most vulnerable households, which are more often headed by women. As part of the smallholder market support activities, such as P4P, WFP provides gender sensitization trainings to support farmers’ organizations (FOs) alongside establishing criteria to ensure at least 30 percent of the leadership roles or positions in decision-making committees are held by women, and that they can contribute to at least 30 percent of the volumes sold collectively by the FO. As a gender transformative approach, the milk processing units under the Milk Project are made up of women.

3. Ethiopia

In Ethiopia, WFP specifically targets women smallholders to ensure they can engage in and benefit from income generating activities. WFP also facilitates women’s access to finance through revolving funds, supporting the establishment of women’s only cooperatives, organizing community conversations on women’s roles in the household and community, as well as advocating for the development of women-specific interventions.

4. Niger

In Niger, as part of the RWEE project in the four targeted municipalities, WFP’s objective is to purchase commercial surplus from women farmers’ organizations at remunerative




price. In these municipalities, WFP and the government also piloted the use of commodity vouchers and cash when procuring from the FOs. With the additional income and support from UN Women, the women farmers have undertaken other income generating activities. Additionally, they also benefit from processing kits provided by IFAD and nutrition education and improved seeds from FAO. When selecting organizations for direct purchases, WFP and partners also prioritize female FOs even if they do not fully meet the minimum tonnage requirement highlighted in the national local procurement strategy.

- How have female smallholders benefitted (or are expected to benefit) from these actions in terms of food security and nutrition and the progressive realization of the right to food? Please explain:

1. In Burkina Faso, the milk processing units consist only of women. This has enhanced their business development and leadership skills. Gender sensitization trainings to the other supported FOs, is also creating an awareness on women’s empowerment and increasing women’s inclusion.

2. In Ethiopia, WFP and partners’ support to women farmers has enabled them to diversify their livelihoods, increase production and incomes, reduce their workload at the household and farm levels, and enabled women to take on leadership roles. This has not only enabled them to improve the food and nutrition security of themselves and their households, but also economically empowered them.

3. In Niger, WFP’s efforts are reducing vulnerabilities faced by women, such as malnutrition, through the cultivation of nutritious products, increased sales of crops leading to economic empowerment, and increased decision-making.

(vii) Present and expected benefits for the youth

- Have any specific actions been taken (in line with these policy recommendations) to promote the involvement of youth in agriculture and related activities in the context of smallholder agriculture? Please explain:

Agricultural growth, youth employment and food security are closely linked. As the world food needs are expected to double by 2050 alongside a growing population, increasing youth engagement in agriculture by transforming the sector will be key to achieve food and nutrition security. Although WFP’s pro-




smallholder food assistance strategy does not explicitly target youth, throughout the different projects there has been recognition for designing and implementing programmes in a way that can enable and encourage youth participation.

For instance, in Burkina Faso, the gender training modules encompass a module to ensure the FOs account for youth needs and participation, to enable them to enhance their production and also contribute to the decision-making process. WFP also creates youth pools to provide services in the agro-sylvo-pastoral field.

In Niger, WFP encourages youth to join FOs and facilitates out-of-school girls to benefit from Dimitra clubs under the RWEE project.

- How have youth benefitted (or are expected to benefit) from these actions in terms of food security and nutrition and the progressive realization of the right to food of youth? Please explain:

By encouraging youth participation in the agriculture sector, and targeting youth through capacity building initiatives, WFP aims to develop their skills and facilitate their inclusion in value chains to boost their food and nutrition security and livelihoods. To ensure that youth can fully benefit from WFP’s smallholder programming, there is a need to enhance the capacity building interventions and trainings by incorporating innovations, emphasizing on social behavior change communication and ensuring projects are designed with a key understanding of the structural causes of hunger and poverty as they relate to youth.

(viii) Contribution of the use of these policy recommendations to SDGs

- How has the use of these policy recommendations contributed (or is expected to contribute) to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular SDGs 1 & 2 and some of the SDGs targeted in the 2019 review, and to fostering policy coherence? (please tick the answer):

☒ SDG 1 (no poverty)Please explain:

The creation of additional income through agriculture and livestock-related activities can contribute to lifting rural smallholder farmers and their families from poverty.

☒ SDG 2 (zero hunger)Please explain:

WFP’s smallholder-facing programmes help improve the availability, accessibility and utilization of food by boosting




smallholder production and market access. Projects such as FFA help address smallholder food needs in the short-term, while ensuring that they have the capacity to meet their own food requirements through increased resilience reflected in an enhanced asset-base and improved natural resource management. Market-access-oriented projects on the other hand, leverage demand from buyers such as WFP, private sector and schools, to encourage smallholders to invest in their production and benefit from farming, which translates into improved food and nutrition security at the household and well-functioning local food systems.

For instance, in Niger, the national strategy for local procurement from smallholders (SNALAPP) has strengthened the capacities of smallholders to produce a marketable surplus. In a context where achieving Zero Hunger is contingent upon increasing agricultural production, using a market-side pull to sensitive farming communities to invest in their farms and develop entrepreneurial skills enables to boost food security and incomes at the household level, and improves the functioning of local markets to make food accessible to a large share of the population.

☐ SDG 8 (decent work and economic growth)Please explain:

SDG 10 (reduced inequalities)Please explain:

Using gender transformative approaches for empowering women and taking the “gender” dimension into consideration in all smallholder activities contributes to addressing inequalities while also improving the food and nutrition security of women and girls. For instance, this includes taking into considering the roles, specific needs and interests of participating women as well as youth in production, income-generation activities, market access and capacity-building interventions.

☐ SDG 13 (climate action) Please explain:

(ix) Relevance and expected benefits of the use of these policy recommendations to the UN Decade of Family Farming and the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition

- How could these policy recommendations contribute to the UN Decade of Family Farming or (further) contribute to the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition for improving the food security and nutrition of smallholders? Please explain:

These policy recommendations touch across all the actors involved in agriculture and provided concrete solutions for addressing the bottlenecks faced by these actors, including family and smallholder farmers. As such, they can contribute to the UN Decade of Family Farming by supporting the development of national action plans, enabling relevant stakeholders such as UN agencies or governments to identify priority areas for investment




as well as guide the development of pro-smallholder policies.

(x) Catalysts and constraints

- What were the key catalysts that influenced positively the use of these policy recommendations for improving the food security and nutrition of smallholders?

An integrated approach which views the three sets of policy recommendations in a consolidated manner enables understanding the full context in agriculture and designing interventions that can get better results.

A conducive enabling environment as well as the will of different actors to work together for developing pro-smallholder initiatives spanning the entire value chain.

Government commitment and buy-in.

- What were the main constraints and challenges in using these CFS policy recommendations for improving the food security and nutrition smallholders?

Some of the key constraints observed when implementing projects that incorporate these policy recommendations include:

Limited security in the areas of implementation, combined with shocks that lead to internal displacement and affect country office capacity to adequately implement planned activities.

Limited financial and human resources.

Weak synergy among different interventions and actors because of weak coordination mechanisms, leading to duplication of efforts.

Limited productivity and access to markets and inputs for smallholders.

Disorganized and spatially dispersed smallholder farmers, which affects the ability of humanitarian-development organizations to reach them.

(xi) Good practices - What good practices would you recommend for successful use of these policy recommendations?




Employing community-based participatory approaches that bring together all relevant stakeholders and enabling developing solutions by putting needs of the affected communities at the center.

Undertaking proper assessments and analyses before developing interventions.

Integrating activities by combining multiple recommendations, to ensure needs are adequately met and problems/challenges are tackled in a holistic manner. This will help ensure providing a package of services to smallholders.

Ensuring the development of smallholder-friendly procurement and pricing modalities in order to increase their market access.

Establishing a strong coordination mechanism between partners and implementing actors.

Allocating adequate resources and ensuring that the projects are scalable/sustainable.

(xii) Lessons learned - Do you have any suggestions to make to CFS in order to enhance the use of these policy recommendations for improving the food security and nutrition of smallholders?

Garner government ownership. Ensuring the implementation of these recommendations can be scale-up and is sustainable requires governments adopt this approach and put in place the required capacities, policies and strategies for developing smallholder agriculture.

Increase advocacy efforts on these recommendations to ensure all the relevant actors know about them and are equipped to implement them.

To fully address the needs of smallholders and improve their food and nutrition security, ensure that the recommendations emerge out of a solid understanding of the issues faced by smallholders and other food systems actors.

Create a map of stakeholders to understand what they are doing and where, to ensure better synergy of interventions and avoid duplication of efforts.

(xiii) Potential use of the policy recommendations for improving the

- If these policy recommendations have not been used (or not sufficiently used), how could they be (further) used in the future for improving the food security and nutrition of smallholders, advancing the progressive realization of the right to food,




food security and nutrition of smallholders

achieving SDGs or/ and fostering policy coherence? Please explain:

- What actions could be taken (in line with these policy recommendations) to promote the realization of women’s empowerment, women’s rights and gender equality in the context of smallholder agriculture? Please explain:

- What actions could be taken (in line with these policy recommendations) to promote the involvement of youth in agriculture and related activities in the context of smallholder agriculture? Please explain:

(xiv) Link to additional information

Annex: to be filled if the information provided results from a multi-stakeholder consultation

Date of the multistakeholder eventLocation of the eventWhich groups of stakeholders participated in the event?

Government

UN organization

Civil Society / NGO

Private Sector

Academia

Donor

Other …………………………………………………………………Who organized the event?

Government

UN organization

Civil Society / NGO

Private Sector

Academia

Donor

Other …………………………………………………………………



template for submissions - amazon web...

Documents